by Fred Vargas
“Coast clear,” he whispered into his mobile. “He’s down here, he’s got a pile of work as high as the Eiffel Tower.”
“Thanks, Adrien. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, Camille.”
Danglard hung up in sadness, went back to his desk, mechanically switched on the computer which gave its usual welcome jingle, too jolly by half for the officer’s glum thoughts. Computers are bloody stupid, they can’t adapt to circumstances. Ninety minutes later he saw Adamsberg passing by, walking quite briskly. Danglard rang Camille’s number again to warn her of a probable home call. But she had already set sail.
Adamsberg encountered a closed door once again but this time he didn’t hesitate. He got out his pass key and undid the lock. A single glance was enough to tell him that Camille had flown the nest. The keyboard was gone, so was the plumbing kit and the backpack. The bed was made, the fridge was empty and the power switched off at the mains. Adamsberg sat down on a chair to survey the abandoned nest and to try to think. He surveyed plenty but no thought came. He was torn from his torpor forty-five minutes later by the beeping of his mobile phone.
“Masséna just called,” Danglard told him. “They’ve got a body in Marseille.”
“That’s fine,” Adamsberg opined, just as he had earlier on. “I’ll be going down. Get me a seat on the first plane.”
Around two, when Adamsberg was about to leave the Brigade in turmoil, he put his bag down next to Danglard’s desk.
“I’m off,” he said.
“Yes,” said Danglard.
“I’m leaving you in charge.”
“Yes.”
Adamsberg was looking for his words and his eyes lighted on Danglard’s feet, half-hiding a round wicker basket with a tiny but similarly circular kitten sleeping in it.
“What’s that, Danglard?”
“It’s a cat.”
“You’re bringing moggies into the office, are you? Don’t you think we’ve got enough mess on our hands already?”
“I can’t leave it at home. It’s too little, it pees everywhere and doesn’t yet quite know how to feed itself.”
“Danglard, you told me you did not want a pet.”
“Well, there’s what you say, and there’s what you do.”
Danglard was curt, somewhat hostile, and keeping his eyes on his monitor. Adamsberg recognised it for what it was, the unspoken disapproval he had to put up with from his deputy now and again. He looked down at the basket and the picture came back to him in clear focus. Camille leaving, seen from behind, with a bomber jacket over one arm and a white and grey kitten in the other. He hadn’t given it a thought as he chased after her.
“She gave it to you, didn’t she, Danglard?”
“Yes,” came the reply from a face still glued to the computer screen.
“What’s its name?”
“Woolly.”
Adamsberg drew up a chair and sat down with his elbows on his knees.
“She’s gone walkabout,” he said.
“Yes,” Danglard said again. This time he turned round and stared at Adamsberg’s weary, washed out face.
“Did she tell you where she was going?”
“No.”
There was a brief silence.
“There was a minor collision,” Adamsberg said.
“I know.”
Adamsberg ran both his hands through his hair, slowly, over and over again, as if he was trying to push his skull back into place. Then he got up and left the building without another word.
XXX
MASSÉNA MET HIS opposite number at Marignane airport and took him straight to the morgue where the body was being kept. Adamsberg wanted to have a look, as Masséna couldn’t tell whether this was the serial killer or a copycat case.
“He was found naked in his flat,” Masséna explained. “The locks had been picked by a professional. Very neat work. Despite two hefty brand new bolts.”
“Child’s play,” said Adamsberg. “Was there a police guard on the landing?”
“I’ve got four thousand blocks to look after, commissaire!”
“Yes. A stroke of genius. It took him just a few days to demolish police protection. ID of the victim?”
“Sylvain Jules Marmot, age thirty-three. Works as a fitter down at the repair yards.”
“Ship repair?” Adamsberg queried. “Any connection with Brittany?”
“How did you know?”
“I don’t know. I’m wondering.”
“When he was seventeen he had a job at Concarneau. That’s where he trained as a fitter. But he dropped it all of a sudden and headed for Paris, where he survived as a jobbing carpenter.”
“Was he living on his own down here?”
“Yes. His girlfriend is a married woman.”
“That’s why the plague-monger killed him at his own flat. He does his research properly. He leaves nothing to chance, Masséna.”
“That’s as may be, but there’s not a single common factor linking Marmot and your four victims, commissaire. Apart from his life in Paris between the ages of twenty and twenty-seven. Don’t worry about the interviews, commissaire, I’ve sent the whole file up to your squad.”
“That’s where it happened. In Paris.”
“Where what happened?”
“The crossover. The five of them must have come across each other, got to know each other, one way or another.”
“No, commissaire, I think the monger is taking us for a ride. He’s trying to make us believe that there’s a meaning to all these murders, to put us off the scent. It wasn’t difficult to find out that Marmot lived on his own. All his neighbours know. Down here, people gossip all the time, there’s not much you can keep hidden.”
“Did he get the usual dose of tear gas?”
“A fair old squirt in the eyes. We’ll test a sample against the Paris stuff, just to see if he brought it with or bought fresh in Marseille. That might give us a start.”
“Don’t kid yourself, Masséna. Our man is a genius, that’s for sure. He worked it all out in advance – every hinge and joint, all the cogs and wheels, like an engineer. And he knows exactly what the machine is supposed to do. I wouldn’t be surprised if the fellow turned out to be a scientist.”
“A scientist? I thought you’d said he was a man of letters.”
“He could be both.”
“A scientist and a crackpot?”
“He’s been living with a phantom since 1920.”
“Good Lord, commissaire, do you mean to say we’re looking for an eighty-year old?”
Adamsberg smiled. Masséna was much more amiable in the flesh than on the phone. Maybe too amiable. He couldn’t speak without waving his arms around, taking Adamsberg by the wrist, clapping him on the shoulder, slapping him on the back, or, in the car, pawing his leg.
“I’d see him more as a man in his twenties or thirties.”
“That’s not an age range, friend! That’s the whole damn field!”
“But you can’t rule out an octogenarian, either. The murder method requires minimal strength. It’s choke and go. He uses some kind of self-locking noose – could be a jumbo clip, or a nylon tie, the sort you use for keeping big bunches of electrical cables together. Something you can’t beat, something a child could handle.”
Masséna found a shaded parking slot some way from the entrance to the morgue. It was still high summer in Marseille and people were going around in shirtsleeves or keeping cool in the shade, sitting on their stoops, peeling vegetables in their lap. Whereas in Paris Bertin must be wondering how to cope with the showers without his green oilskin.
The sheet was drawn back from the corpse and Adamsberg inspected it with care. The charcoal smudges were much the same in extent and location as on the Paris bodies – over most of the abdomen, and also on the arms, the upper legs and the tongue. Adamsberg rubbed a finger on a smudge and then on his trouser leg.
“We’ve sent it off to the lab,” Masséna said.
“Any bites?
”
“Two, here,” said Masséna as he pointed to the groin.
“At the flat?”
“We picked up seven fleas, the way you told us, commissaire. That’s a neat trick, the guinea pig. The insects have also gone to the lab.”
“Ivory envelope?”
“Yes, in the bin. I don’t understand why the man didn’t report it.”
“He was frightened, Masséna.”
“Quite.”
“Frightened of the flics. More frightened of flics than of the killer. He thought he could fight it on his own, that’s why he had two extra bolts put on his door. What about his clothes?”
“Higgledy-piggledy, all over the bedroom. Marmot was a messy bugger. When you live alone, who cares anyway?”
“That’s odd. The monger is a tidy undresser.”
“But he didn’t have to undress him, my friend! Marmot was asleep in bed in the altogether. Most people do, down here. Because of the climate.”
“Can I see the flat?”
* * *
Adamsberg stepped through the archway of a dilapidated and undistinguished red-washed block not far from the Vieux-Port.
“He didn’t have to bother about doorcodes, I see.”
“Must have been out of order for quite a while,” said Masséna.
Masséna had brought along a high-voltage portable searchlamp because the time switch on the stairwell lights had stopped working too. In the torch beam, Adamsberg looked carefully at the flat doors on each landing.
“Well?” asked Masséna as they got to the top floor.
“Well, you’ve had a visit. From the monger. Not a shadow of doubt about it. The form of the strokes, the speed of execution, the command of the shape, the placing of the notches on the crossbar – it’s him all over. You could even say he took his time over this one. Not much risk of being caught at it in a block like this, is there?”
“Well, seeing the state the block is in,” Masséna explained, “if you came across a fellow painting a door, you wouldn’t give a damn, you might even think it was a step in the right direction. Anyway, with hundreds of other people painting the same sign at the same time, what risk was he running? Zero. Shall we go for a walk, my friend?”
Adamsberg looked at him in amazement. He’d never come across another policeman who liked going for walks the way he did.
“I’ve got a wee dinghy moored in a calanque. Let’s head out to sea for a bit. Helps to think, doesn’t it? It’s one of my habits.”
Half an hour later Adamsberg was on board the Edmond Dantès, a motor launch with an even keel. He’d taken his shirt and vest off and was sitting aforeships with his eyes closed in the mild breeze. Masséna had also stripped to the waist and was manning the rudder at the aft. Neither man was wracking his brain for ideas.
“Are you going back tonight?”
“Tomorrow, early,” said Adamsberg. “I want to nose around the harbour.”
“Oh yes. You can pick up ideas in the Vieux-Port too.”
Adamsberg had switched off his mobile phone during the boat ride so when he got back to land he checked his voicemail. Chief Superintendent Brézillon, deeply worried about the tornado of 4s in Paris, to rap his knuckles; Danglard, to give him the latest tally; Decambrais, to dictate the latest “special”, just in on Monday morning:
It elected to reside in the first days in the damp, low-lying and filthy quarters. At first it made slow progress. It even seemed to disappear. But not many a month had passed before it took courage and set forth, slowly at first, through busy and comfortable streets until it shewed itself brazenly in every quarter, spreading its mortal poison. It is everywhere.
Adamsberg wrote the message down in his pad then reread it slowly to Marc Vandoosler’s voicemail machine. He fiddled with his mobile, irrationally trying to find another message that might have got lost in the pile but there was nothing to find. Camille, please.
Adamsberg had a real beanfeast with Masséna that evening, and they parted with hearty hugs and promises of renewing the pleasure. He then sauntered along the southern side of the Vieux-Port, beneath the floodlit tower of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde. He studied the shadows of each boat in turn, noting that their precise outlines, down to the detail of the toprigging, were reflected in black on the water. He knelt down and dropped a pebble in the harbour. It made the reflection shimmer and shake like a man in fever. Tiny slivers of moonlight caught the edges of each ripple. Adamsberg froze with the flat of his hand on the ground. The monger was nigh. He was there.
He raised his head and turned it cautiously to take a good look at the night-time strollers who were making the most of the last heat of the day. Couples and a few knots of youngsters. No solitary male. Adamsberg, still on his knees, scanned the quay yard by yard. No, he wasn’t on the dock-side. He was near but not there. With barely a muscle moving Adamsberg threw another equally tiny pebble into the still, dark water. The shadow shimmered, and once again a moonbeam put a twinkle into the wavelet’s leading edge. That’s where he was. On water. On shining water. In the twinkling that came and went. Adamsberg steadied himself in his squatting position, with both his hands on the ground and his eyes firmly fixed on the water line of the white-hulled boat. The monger was in the twinkling light. Adamsberg hung on, stock still. Like a lichen breaking free from a submarine cliff, the picture that he’d lost the day before on the square in Paris began its gradual ascent towards the surface. Adamsberg was barely breathing. His eyes were closed. It was in the sparkle. The picture was the sparkle.
Then it popped right up, whole and entire. The flash he’d felt right at the end of Joss’s newscast. Someone had budged, and something had twinkled. A short, sharp sparkle. Not a photo flash, no, definitely not; nor would it have been a lighter. It was a much tinier, whiter sparkle, like the twinkling of the ripples in moonlight, only even more fleeting. It had moved in a sweeping, downward direction, as if a hand had held a shooting star.
Adamsberg stood up and took a deep breath. He’d got it. Someone attending the newscast had been wearing a real sparkler. It was the monger’s twinkle and it came from his talismanic ring. He’d been there, on the square, protected by his diamond ring.
Next morning in the departure lounge at Marignane airport, he got Vandoosler’s reply.
“I spent all night trying to find your bloody gobbet,” Marc said. “The text you gave me was in modernised French – it was rewritten in the nineteenth century.”
“So?” asked Adamsberg, who had not lost any of his trust in Vandoosler’s repository of knowledge.
“Troyes. Written in 1517, originally.”
“Trois?”
“No, not three, commissaire. The city of Troyes. Your monger is taking you on a tour.”
Adamsberg rang Masséna straight away.
“Good news, Masséna, you can relax. The monger’s dropped you.”
“What’s going on, my friend?”
“He’s off to Troyes, you know, where the bubbly comes from.”
“Poor guy.”
“The monger?”
“No, you.”
“I’ve got to go, Masséna, that’s my flight they’re calling.”
“We’ll meet again, my friend, we’ll meet again.”
Adamsberg rang Danglard just before he got on the plane and passed on the news. He should get in touch straight away with the town that was now under threat.
“Is he going to have us traipse round the whole country?”
“Danglard, the plague-monger wears a diamond ring.”
“Is it a woman, then?”
“Could be. Perhaps. I don’t know.”
Adamsberg switched off his mobile phone for the flight. As soon as he was in the arrivals hall at Orly airport he reconnected and scoured his voicemail. No new messages. He stuck the phone back in his pocket and stiffened his upper lip.
XXXI
WHILE THE CITY of Troyes geared up to face the onslaught, Adamsberg lost no time in getting back to the Brigade a
nd then directly on to Place Edgar-Quinet. Decambrais bore down upon him with a large envelope in his hand.
“Did your consultant unravel yesterday’s ‘special’?” he asked.
“Troyes, epidemic of 1517.”
Decambrais stroked his cheek, as if he was checking up on his shave.
“The monger has discovered the joy of travel,” he said. “If he goes round all the places which ever had an outbreak of plague, then he’ll be at it for the next thirty years! All over Europe, too. There’s barely more than a couple of Hungarian villages and a part of Flanders that he won’t have to visit. He’s really screwing things up.”
“He’s making them simpler. He’s going after his targets.”
Decambrais gave the commissaire principal a quizzical look.
“I don’t think he’s travelling around for the fun of it,” Adamsberg explained. “His targets have moved. So he’s going after them.”
“His targets?”
Adamsberg pursued his train of though without answering Decambrais’s question directly.
“If they’ve moved off in different directions, that means the business happened some time back. There was a gang, or a group, and a crime. The monger is picking them off one by one by bringing the scourge of the Lord down upon them. I’m sure the killings aren’t random. He knows what he’s aiming at and he’s had his victims marked out for years. They’ve probably understood that they’re not far down the line. They probably know who the monger is.”
“No, they can’t know that, commissaire. Otherwise they’d ask for police protection.”
“No, Decambrais. Because of the crime. It would be like confessing. The guy in Marseille had understood, because he’d put two extra bolts on his door.”
“But what crime, for heaven’s sake?”
“How the hell should I know? There was some awful mess. This is the comeback. You make a mess, you get fleas.”
“But if that’s the answer, then your data base would have come up with it ages ago.”
